An Adapted Evidence-Based Coaching Program for Fathers and Their Young Children in the Context of Home Visiting

Randomized Controlled Trial of an Adapted Evidence-Based Coaching Program for Fathers and Their Young Children in the Context of Home Visiting

Father-child pairs (N=200; children ages 12-36 months) will be randomized to FIND-F or a waitlist control group. Assessments comparing the two groups will occur at baseline, end of program, and 6 months post-program. Our aims include:

Aim 1: Evaluate the main impacts of FIND-F on the primary program target (fathers' supportive parenting) and related child and parent outcomes.

Aim 2. Identify mechanisms of FIND-F's intervention effects.

Aim 3. Examine variation by select child, father, and program measures.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Positive Parenting
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND)

Detailed Description

The proposed work will achieve three specific aims in the context of a two-arm, fully powered RCT. This will be one of the first large-scale RCTs focused on evaluating the impacts and underlying theory of a nurturing fathering program.

As fathers enroll, they will be randomly assigned to either FIND-F (Group A) or a waitlist control group (Group B). A waitlist control group design is proposed based on community views that it would be unethical to deny consenting, eligible fathers access to FIND-F. This is a common approach in early childhood evaluations to increase program access. Both groups will be assessed at three time points: baseline, endpoint, and 6-Month follow-up. After the 6-month follow-up assessment, the waitlist group will be given the opportunity to receive FIND-F.

Each FIND-F session focuses on a specific element of a serve and return interaction, using the edited films to support fathers in learning about that element. The five elements are: (a) Sharing Child's Focus- when the father notices what the child is interested in and puts his attention there too; (b) Supporting and Encouraging- when the father responds to the child's "serve" through acknowledging, soothing, comforting, or praising the child; (c) Naming - when the father provides a word or explanation for what the child is seeing, doing, or feeling; (d) Back and Forth- when the father and child continue interacting in a longer back-and-forth manner; and (e) Endings and Beginnings- when a child signals the end of an activity, a new serve and return interaction begins, and the father follows the child's lead.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 200
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Holly Schindler, PhD; Phone Number: 206-616-0853; Email: hschindl@uw.edu

Study Locations

• United States
  • Washington
    • Seattle, Washington, United States, 98125
      • Recruiting
      • Akin
      • Contact: FIND Program Manager; Phone Number: 206-695-3200; Email: novina.maree@akinfamily.org

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child; Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Identify as a father
• Speak English or Spanish
• Have a child between the ages of 12-36 months who lives with you
• Be enrolled in Akin services

Exclusion Criteria:

• No additional exclusion criteria

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Filming Interactions to Nurture development (FIND); This group of fathers will receive FIND, a 6-session manualized program. FIND with fathers is delivered through flexible home visits, targets warm and responsive father-child interactions, and uses video recordings to emphasize each father's parenting strengths in the context of everyday caretaking moments.	Behavioral: Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND); FIND-F is a 6-session manualized program that begins with the home visitor taking a 10-minute video of the father and child engaging in an everyday activity (e.g., playing, having a snack). Then, that video is carefully edited to emphasize the specific strengths observed in the father-child interactions. The brief, edited videos are then reviewed with the father the following week. In reviewing the video clips, the home visitor uses micro-analytic narration, highlighting the frame-by-frame sequence of events that fosters the child's healthy development. In this way, the goal of FIND-F is to shift the father's perceptions of himself and his child, enabling the father to become increasingly responsive and encouraging. Home visitors also provide opportunities for fathers to comment and ask questions throughout the video review.; Other Names: FIND with Fathers; FIND-F
No Intervention: Waitlist Control; This group will serve as the control group. After all data is collected, they will be offered FIND.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Fathers' Supportive Parenting Practices	Fathers' supportive parenting skills will be observed through videotaped father-child interactions. Fathers will be provided with a standard bag of toys and asked to "share these toys with your child as you normally would." Each set of toys (one set for pretest, one for endpoint, and one for follow-up) has been carefully selected with input from home visitors about which toys could support interactions across the age range in our study. The first 10 minutes of the videotaped interactions will be coded using the PICCOLO-D (Dads' Parenting Interactions with Children Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes).	From enrollment to the end of treatment at 7 weeks
Fathers' Supportive Parenting Practices	Fathers' supportive parenting skills will be observed through videotaped father-child interactions. Fathers will be provided with a standard bag of toys and asked to "share these toys with your child as you normally would." Each set of toys (one set for pretest, one for endpoint, and one for follow-up) has been carefully selected with input from home visitors about which toys could support interactions across the age range in our study. The first 10 minutes of the videotaped interactions will be coded using the PICCOLO-D (Dads' Parenting Interactions with Children Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes).	6 months after end of treatment

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Parenting Stress	Fathers' parenting stress will be measured using the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF) (Loyd & Abidin, 1985). The PSI-SF asks parents of children birth to 12 years old to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement about 36 statements on a 5-point scale regarding their level of stress, how difficult their child is to manage, and whether parenting fits their expectations.	From enrollment to the end of treatment at 7 weeks
Father Identity	Fathers' identity related to the fathering role will be measured with The Pie, which instructs fathers to create a graphical representation of their psychological investment in the different aspects of their lives (Cowan & Cowan, 1991). More specifically, fathers will be asked to list the main roles in their lives and then divide a circle (pie) into pieces so that the size of each piece represents the importance of that role. In this study, the degrees of the circle that represent fathering or parenting will be recorded.	From enrollment to the end of treatment at 7 weeks
Children's Behavior Problems and Social and Emotional Competence	We will use the Brief Infant-Toddler Social-Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) to measure both behavior problems and social and emotional competence (Briggs-Gowan, Carter, McCarthy, Augustyn, & Clark, 2013). The BITSEA is a standardized parent-reported measure of 42 items.	From enrollment to the end of treatment at 7 weeks
Father Involvement	Fathers' involvement will be captured through the Father Engagement Scale (Dyer et al., 2015). This measure is for use with fathers of children 12 months to 6 years and asks fathers 10 questions on a 5-point scale about the frequency of their engagement in activities such as playing with toys, hugging their child, talking with their child, and encouraging their child.	From enrollment to the end of treatment at 7 weeks
Parenting Stress	Fathers' parenting stress will be measured using the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF) (Loyd & Abidin, 1985). The PSI-SF asks parents of children birth to 12 years old to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement about 36 statements on a 5-point scale regarding their level of stress, how difficult their child is to manage, and whether parenting fits their expectations.	6 months after end of treatment
Father Identity	Fathers' identity related to the fathering role will be measured with The Pie, which instructs fathers to create a graphical representation of their psychological investment in the different aspects of their lives (Cowan & Cowan, 1991). More specifically, fathers will be asked to list the main roles in their lives and then divide a circle (pie) into pieces so that the size of each piece represents the importance of that role. In this study, the degrees of the circle that represent fathering or parenting will be recorded.	6 months after end of treatment
Children's Behavior Problems and Social and Emotional Competence	We will use the Brief Infant-Toddler Social-Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) to measure both behavior problems and social and emotional competence (Briggs-Gowan, Carter, McCarthy, Augustyn, & Clark, 2013). The BITSEA is a standardized parent-reported measure of 42 items.	6 months after end of treatment
Father Involvement	Fathers' involvement will be captured through the Father Engagement Scale (Dyer et al., 2015). This measure is for use with fathers of children 12 months to 6 years and asks fathers 10 questions on a 5-point scale about the frequency of their engagement in activities such as playing with toys, hugging their child, talking with their child, and encouraging their child.	6 months after end of treatment

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Washington
• Collaborators: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD); Stanford University
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Holly Schindler, PhD, University of Washington

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): June 15, 2026
• Primary Completion (Estimated): December 1, 2029
• Study Completion (Estimated): December 1, 2029

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: June 16, 2026
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 23, 2026
• First Posted (Actual): June 30, 2026

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): June 30, 2026
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 23, 2026
• Last Verified: June 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: STUDY00022913; R01HD117812-01 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: De-identified survey data and video codes will be preserved and shared. Respondent identifiers and raw video will not be shared in order to maintain the confidentiality of participants.
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: The scientific data will be submitted to ICPSR no later than the time of an associated publication or end of the performance period, whichever comes first. Data deposited with ICPSR will be available in perpetuity.

IPD Sharing Access Criteria

Data will be for public use (i.e., not restricted). ICPSR users must agree to the following per ICPSR guidelines:

• The datasets are to be used solely for statistical analysis and reporting aggregated information.
• The confidentiality of research participants is to be guarded in all ways.
• Anything that can potentially breach participants' confidentiality is to be reported promptly to ICPSR.
• The data are not to be redistributed or sold to others without the written agreement of ICPSR.
• The user will inform ICPSR of the use of the data in books, articles, and other forms of publication.

• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: STUDY_PROTOCOL

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No